Youssef Jabal: Canberra builder avoids jail over involvement with cocaine dealer cousin, Bilal Omari
Canberra builder Youssef Jabal, 35, was involved in a failed, panicked attempt to cover up his cousin’s cocaine dealing operation as the drug squad closed in.
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A Lamborghini-driving tradie who was a sidekick in his cousin’s cocaine peddling operation has narrowly avoided being locked up.
Canberra builder Youssef Jabal, 35, of Crace in the ACT, on Thursday faced the ACT Supreme Court for the final time, nearly three years after a series of tapped phone calls revealed his involvement with the drug dealing of his cousin, Bilal Omari.
Jabal in March pleaded guilty to being knowingly concerned in cocaine trafficking.
During a drug raid on Omari’s office at the Australian National University in December 2017, Omari rang his girlfriend, Fiona Brosnan.
According to agreed facts, Ms Brosnan then rang Jabal and asked to get drugs out of her boyfriend’s car, which police were trying to find.
“Break it, Youssef. Something. Like, he’s got everything in his car,” Ms Bronson said.
Jabal replied: “Leave it with me. I’ll work it out”.
Ms Bronson then rang back and said: “Just break the window and get to his car and take um, just clean, clean out whatever …”
Police arrived moments after hearing the back window of Omari’s Jeep being smashed with a tyre iron, and found a bag of cocaine with Jabal’s fingerprints on it sitting in the carpark.
Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson found the tapped phone calls revealed a “shared understanding” that there was cocaine in the car, and that Jabal had “an interest” in the drugs.
His involvement on the day was not an “isolated incident”, Justice Loukas-Karlsson said.
Jabal had gone through a “change in attitude” since his drug-using “party lifestyle” earlier years, and now spends most of his free time with his family and at the gym.
Omari has also admitted to taking part in importing two large shipments of MDMA from a European supplier known as “Mr Sock”.
The MDMA operation — which Jabal is not charged over — was masterminded by a prisoner, Emin Yavuz, at Canberra’s notoriously mismanaged prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
Omari and Yavuz are yet to be sentenced
Justice Loukas-Karlsson sentenced Jabal to 12 months jail, to be served in the community as an intensive corrections order.
